X-Men #16

After a quick detour in DC land, we head back to Marvel, as I take a look at the latest issue of X-Men. I had to skip the last storyarc for this series since it was written by Chris Yost, whose work I refuse to read to this day. With Yost gone though, and the far superior Victor Gischler back, I put this series back on my pull list. Here's hoping Gischler didn't lose a step after his short hiatus.

X-Men #16:

Summary: The annoying FF kids(and Spider-Man) find a weird buoy in the Bermuda Triangle, which leads to FF members, Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Thing and Dr. Doom... wait, Doom is seriously STILL on the FF... Sheesh... What the hell is Jonathan Hickman doing in that series... Anyway, let me try that again... Mr. Fantastic, Thing, Invisible Woman and Dr. Doom head to Crazy Mutie Island(Utopia) and Reed reveals to Lord Summers that there was a holographic message on the buoy(as there usually are on buoys) from Lee Forrester(!). Wow, there's a blast from the past! Lee states that her crew and herself were trapped in another dimension and needed help, before the transmission is dramatically cut off. Lord Summers thanks Reed for the message and tells him that the X-Men would handle things from there, but Reed insists on going too, since the Thing had some experience with the Bermuda Triangle's dimensional rifts... Don't ask. Lord Summers decides to take Nemesis, Wolverine(because he's contractually obligated to be in EVERY Marvel team book), Emma Frost, Pixie(to play the role of spunky teenage girl), and Magneto(who, much like Lord Summers also has a history with Lee), and all of the heroes(as well as Doom and Magneto) head to Reed's dimension hopping submarine... Who owns a dimension hopping submarine?! Anyway, the group boards the sub, finds the dimensional vortex under under the waters, and pass through, but suffer some extensive damage doing so. Upon emerging from the waters, the team spots an allosaurus, which Lord Summers manages to scare away. From there, Lord Summers leaves Reed and Nemesis to fix the sub while he splits the rest of the group up into teams to try to find Lee... Except for Doom, who refuses to be ordered around by Lord Summers, because even as an unlikely good guy, Dr. Doom is AWESOME. Thing, Pixie and Wolverine teleport to some strange pyramid structures where they find some little green men in giant mechanical spiders attacking natives. After dealing with the mechanical spiders, the three heroes are approached by Skull the Slayer?!? Holy obscure superheroes, Batman!!

Thoughts: I have to say, I haven't read a whole lot of Victor Gischler's work, mainly because he's still rather new to the world of comic books, but from what I have read, the man is a master of dialogue and storytelling. In this one issue he managed to take characters I don't like(Lord Summers and Emma), characters I don't care about(Pixie), characters in the wrong role(Doom and Magneto), and incredibly obscure characters(Lee Forrester and Skull the Slayer) and made it all work perfectly together. Seriously, if you would have listed the characters appearing in this issue, and the roles they'd be serving in, I'd have wanted to skip reading this one. But I'll be damned if it didn't all come together perfectly. So yeah, even with bizarre characters in bizarre situations, I'm definitely looking forward to the next issue... Go figure!

Score: 8 1/2 out of 10.Poor Wolvie... Every strong guy thinks they can simply pick him up and throw him around now!